- Gamin
Gamin, a monitoring system for files and directories, independently implements a subset of FAM, the File Alteration Monitor. Running as a service, it allows for the detection of modifications to a file or directory. gam_server functions as a daemon for Gamin.
Origins
The word "gamin" in French (where it also has a female form "
gamine ") refers to a boy, especially an abandoned and homeless boy who roams the streets; an urchin. The Gamin project built on an earlier project called Marmot [ [http://www.gnome.org/~veillard/gamin/overview.html Overview ] ] (which in French means "child" or "brat").How it works
Under
Linux , Gamin usesinotify ordnotify to monitor filesystem activity. UnderFreeBSD , Gamin useskqueue /kevent as the native FreeBSD kernel event notification mechanism, but in this case kqueue has one major drawback as compared to inotify: inotify is the filename-based monitoring facility and kqueue usesfile descriptor s for identification of monitored files, so, under FreeBSD, gam_server has to open each file in the monitored directory. This can be an issue when monitoring directories with many files stored, because system could easily reach its kernel limits on maximum file descriptor count (kern.maxfiles and kern.maxfilesperproc).External links
* [http://www.gnome.org/~veillard/gamin/ The Gamin project page]
References
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.